Chemistry Salary

Chemistry is an extremely useful career.  It is the study, as the name suggests, of chemicals.  This is an incredibly broad topic with a huge number of potential careers involved.  Chemistry is more than just making things go flash and boom, and there are a number of ways it can be applied to every day science.

Education in Chemistry

It is possible to get a decent number of jobs with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, but generally, if you're really serious about doing a chemistry related job, you want to go with a doctorate, master's or a Ph.D.  This generation is fairly intensive, and is not easy to get through.  You must come out having an excellent understanding of chemicals and their properties, and how it is they relate to their surrounding environment.  Ph.D. coursework in chemistry will, at times, often spill over into the closely related topics of physics and biology, which both overlap with chemistry in countless areas.  In fact, one of the fields one can potentially get into is biochemistry, which is the study of chemicals reactions within natural environments, specifically in living organisms. 

Areas of Chemistry to Go Into

One can go into a number of different fields within chemistry which offer a variety of opportunities for work and research.  Unless, however, your work is on something that can be packaged and sold, you will likely end up working at a University or a scientific institute where you are given grants for your projects rather than having them be funded by specific companies.

Biochemistry

Biochemistry, as we have already said, is the study of chemical reactions within biological systems.  This typically means the interaction of chemicals within a living organism.  This field is often somewhat related to medical sciences, as its major goal is usually in the development of knowledge about the human body and how various chemicals can be used in relation to certain parts of the body.  This is not exclusive, of course, as there are many other living organisms other than humans. 

Organic Chemistry

Organic chemistry is different from biochemistry in that it doesn't focus on living things so much as carbon compounds, which is to say organic compounds that may or may not be involved in living organisms.  All organisms on our planet are carbon-based, so a lot of this chemistry overlaps, but there are also aspects of this that are highly involved in serious issues such as global warming and climate change.  Many of these problems are related to issues with organic compounds, so organic chemistry offers a solution to many of these things.

Pharmaceuticals

Pharmaceuticals will be a particularly well paid field for anyone going into chemistry.  Pharmaceutical chemists try to develop medicines that can fix various problems within the human body.  In this sense, they overlap with biochemists - and in many respects, they ARE biochemists - except that their main purpose is relegated to coming up with chemical solutions to problems within the human body.  The pharmaceuticals industry is incredibly lucrative, so pharmaceutical chemists are going to make a lot of money.

Agricultural Chemistry

Agricultural chemistry is straightforward enough.  It focuses on the use of chemicals to facilitate the growth of crops and livestock.  They may try to develop more environmentally friendly pesticides or try and develop a more effective fertilizer.  This is also a relatively well-paid field, though a slightly stinkier one.

Food Chemistry

Food chemistry consists of developing foods so that they perform a certain function - it may "enrich" the food so it has an extra amount of a certain nutrient in it, or it may try to improve the flavor, or it may simply try to increase its shelf life.

Geochemistry

Geochemistry is more focused on processes in the inanimate earth, particularly in rocks, oceans, and gases that can be found around the earth.  Geochemists may be used in the development of fuels or in environmental matters.

Physical Chemistry

Physical chemistry is the fusion of physics and chemistry, which is to say transferring the knowledge of chemicals to an atomic level, where one can see the chemical relations between atoms.

Chemistry Salary

Your chemistry salary depends on the field you are in and who you work for.  If you are in research, you'll generally be making around $80,000 a year.  This is actually true for most all research related fields.  The pay goes up when you enter the corporate sector, and the chemistry salary goes down when you're working in academia, down to $50,000.  At its best corporate goodness, a chemistry salary can be up to $100,000 a year.

With a Ph.D. in chemistry, you're going to be in high demand, and probably pretty well paid.  A chemistry salary is one of the better salaries that a scientist can get.  With less education, of course, the pay for a chemistry salary drops off significantly.